Garin's Days Off

I wasn't expecting Garin home until around 4PM on Monday, so you can imagine my excitement when I heard car doors shutting outside at around 9AM. The previous night they had been up most of the night responding to a distress call for a grounded boat. Since saving lives takes a lot of energy, they sent him home early to catch up on his lost sleep. This sure made me a happy wife!

I let him sleep for a little while, and then he woke up (on his own, I promise!) and we took a trip down to Atlantic Beach (about 3o mins away) to "Sector" (which is the command center for all of the stations in North Carolina). We had heard that they had an exchange where we could get some Coast Guard goods. We were a little disappointed as the exchange was no bigger than a gas station and very similar to a gas station as far as the goods they sold. We did find the special "coast guard blue" shirts that G was looking for but I wasn't able to find the "I love my Coastie" shirt I've been dreaming about. Oh well, one day I'll get to sport my Coastie Chick pride. After our trip to the Coast Guard Exchange we hit up the closest Wal-Mart and stocked up on some needed goods which included a bike inner tube for Garin's bike and a nice large seat for my new bike (my rear end was way to large for that little excuse for a "saddle").

After we got home we got ready and went to the Men's and Women's Bible Studies held at our church. I think I'm going to really enjoy mine. We are going to do Beth Moore's Bible Study called "Stepping Up" on the Psalms of Assent (that's Psalm 120 - 134). I'm excited because I have done multiple Beth Moore Studies on my own but I have never done it with the video series. There are about 40 women in the group, so it should be good! The Men are going over 1st John...its a much smaller group (about 6 men), but Garin seemed to like it.

On Tuesday we went on a new adventure. As I mentioned earlier I got a new bike! I'm pretty pumped about it because I've never had a new bike with gears and hand brakes and stuff. Growing up on the farm didn't afford much opportunity for bike riding, and gears were pretty nonessential. But since we are living at the beach and EVERYONE has a bike around here, I figured I needed to join the crowd. So last weekend we bought me a bright shiny PURPLE bike from the Marine Exchange in Jacksonville.

So, on Tuesday Garin and I decided to go for a bike ride. We rode up to the pier and ate our bag lunch that we packed (and mind you that I carried ALL of our stuff in a backpack because G wanted to get a tan on his back...he got all red, all over again, which serves him right!). We decided to ride even further past the pier along the bike trail that takes you on a road by the ocean. I was feeling pretty good until we decided to turn around and come back. I had heard about the wind around here being tough going one direction. I sure didn't feel it when we were on our way out, but boy did I feel it when we were on our way back in. My legs were BURNING! That was some hard work! And it was pretty flat, that's what is sad. OH well, I guess bike riding just isn't cut out for me. I just enjoy it for getting me from point A to point B (and hopefully A and B are in close proximity!). After we finally made it back to our house we headed out for the beach. I'll post some pictures later on what we saw there. All in all it was a GREAT two days from my perspective! Now back to two long days of work for the both of us!

(okay, I just don't get it...the spaces between paragraphs worked at the beginning of the post, but then won't work on the last couple of paragraphs! Grr! Anyone have any suggestions for figuring this out?!)